Such as sell your campaign setting to WotC,let them make a lot of changes to your first draft,and then put on the D&D logo to sale - although I think they are unlikely to buy any ideas at now...... I think if you sell your world,then you will lose control to own world(At least to a large extent).You will share it with other creators, while sharing means disagreement.What do you think?

In a sense, writing for the DM's Guild is like this, on a much, much smaller scale.

The rest, here, I am prefacing with the usual "This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer, seek professional counsel if you have further questions" disclaimers. That being said...

Because it isn't work for hire, or outright sold to WotC, like the settings for their setting search competition from many years back, you get to keep many of the rights you would normally have to give up when you submit your work to the DM's Guild. Your stuff, If I remember right, stays your stuff.. but you also grant WotC and other Guild writers license to use what you've submitted to the pool of content*

*Play with impunity and use the entirety of the 5e ruleset if you write directly and explicitly for the Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft settings; otherwise, your content has to be setting-agnostic (aka "vanilla").

There are things I would be willing to sell of course. That is the cool thing about being able to become a professional game designer, something I think many of us have dreamt of at least from time to time.

But there are other things that I don't share on forums or would sell the rights to, entertaining some vain idea that this is my baby and that maybe I could do something with it while retaining the rights to it myself.

So it is a dilemma for sure

Then again, I love being part of a community, sharing ideas back and forth, where noone is particularly focused on profit. I have seen the drive for profit destroy fan communities and at first I was worried that the DMsGuild might mean people would stop sharing stuff and in that way hurting the communities I am part of now. Fortunately it seems I worried for no reason. This place is worth a lot more to me than a few bucks from DMsGuild to be honest.

Personally? Naw. 10-15 years ago I would have, but today, no. Having the D&D label on my setting has no value to me. My dream would be to win a lottery, retire, and then just self-publish. Probably not even sell the books, just create a couple dozen copies, and if someone wants one, I'd give them away (or sell for $1; basically the same thing; depends on which is legally better for me). I wouldn't mind people writing in my setting, but I'd like to remain gatekeeper and avoid messy legal issues.

I wouldn't mind designing a world for Wizards (in fact, I did submit to the setting search, way back when). The world I use is already a mishmash of existing WotC properties (and other long-since expired licenses), so I'm pretty sure they wouldn't buy it from me.

RobJN wrote:In a sense, writing for the DM's Guild is like this, on a much, much smaller scale.

The rest, here, I am prefacing with the usual "This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer, seek professional counsel if you have further questions" disclaimers. That being said...

Because it isn't work for hire, or outright sold to WotC, like the settings for their setting search competition from many years back, you get to keep many of the rights you would normally have to give up when you submit your work to the DM's Guild. Your stuff, If I remember right, stays your stuff.. but you also grant WotC and other Guild writers license to use what you've submitted to the pool of content*

*Play with impunity and use the entirety of the 5e ruleset if you write directly and explicitly for the Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft settings; otherwise, your content has to be setting-agnostic (aka "vanilla").

You are not allowed to create your own campaign settings for DMs Guild.

You can create generic content. And you can create content that supports a WotC approved setting (currently Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft). But that's it.

And, as far as I can tell, the DMs Guild agreement has the same sort of "self destruct" logic that the d20STL had. (You are only allowed to sell your DMs Guild content via DMs Guild, so if they ever shut that down, they shut down all the DMs Guild content too.)

night_druid wrote:Personally? Naw. 10-15 years ago I would have, but today, no. Having the D&D label on my setting has no value to me. My dream would be to win a lottery, retire, and then just self-publish. Probably not even sell the books, just create a couple dozen copies, and if someone wants one, I'd give them away (or sell for $1; basically the same thing; depends on which is legally better for me). I wouldn't mind people writing in my setting, but I'd like to remain gatekeeper and avoid messy legal issues.

Sounds good to me.

If I won the Eurolottery jackpot I would be able to hire artists and designers and get them to help me design free netbooks. I think I would rather do that, if money was no object.

RobJN wrote:I wouldn't mind designing a world for Wizards (in fact, I did submit to the setting search, way back when). The world I use is already a mishmash of existing WotC properties (and other long-since expired licenses), so I'm pretty sure they wouldn't buy it from me.

Hmm... selling them their own stuff....

I would love for you to write a topic about the world you tried to sell to WotC sometime.

sam wrote:Such as sell your campaign setting to WotC,let them make a lot of changes to your first draft,and then put on the D&D logo to sale - although I think they are unlikely to buy any ideas at now...... I think if you sell your world,then you will lose control to own world(At least to a large extent).You will share it with other creators, while sharing means disagreement.What do you think?

I don't have a campaign world to sell.

However, looking at what happened with Forgotten Realms and Eberron (which are the only two bought-in D&D campaign settings that I know of) selling a campaign world would mean that a bunch of D&D designers would come in and add stuff and a bunch of D&D artists would make art work for it.

RobJN wrote:In a sense, writing for the DM's Guild is like this, on a much, much smaller scale.

The rest, here, I am prefacing with the usual "This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer, seek professional counsel if you have further questions" disclaimers. That being said...

Because it isn't work for hire, or outright sold to WotC, like the settings for their setting search competition from many years back, you get to keep many of the rights you would normally have to give up when you submit your work to the DM's Guild. Your stuff, If I remember right, stays your stuff.. but you also grant WotC and other Guild writers license to use what you've submitted to the pool of content*

*Play with impunity and use the entirety of the 5e ruleset if you write directly and explicitly for the Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft settings; otherwise, your content has to be setting-agnostic (aka "vanilla").

You are not allowed to create your own campaign settings for DMs Guild.

You can create generic content. And you can create content that supports a WotC approved setting (currently Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft). But that's it.

Thus, that last sentence.

BigMac wrote:And, as far as I can tell, the DMs Guild agreement has the same sort of "self destruct" logic that the d20STL had. (You are only allowed to sell your DMs Guild content via DMs Guild, so if they ever shut that down, they shut down all the DMs Guild content too.)

Probably also true, which is why you would publish via the 5e SRD/OGL on your own. But this was about your setting and selling it to WotC for them to put the full glitz and glitter of REAL D&D on it, much like they did for Kieth Baker.

I brought the Guild up as a "middle of the road" option: boiling off a bit of the "world-specifics" to make it vanilla D&D would allow full use of the ruleset, digital distribution and a 50 percent share of the sales which -- to me, anyway -- seems mostly-fair for the individual being able to use the current ruleset and/or the option of writing all-in with those settings WotC has opened up to IP sharing (alas, still no Mystara.....). You wouldn't necessarily need to worry about the corporate suits meddling with your material unless they bought it outright from you. And then you'd be in that boat the OP mentioned in the OP, waiving any further rights to said work.

But yeah, it'd be hard to pass up handing the material over to WotC's stable of artists. Matter of fact, I have a whole series of rough sketches and art briefs they could work from, for some of the scenes from the Chronicle......

BigMac wrote:And, as far as I can tell, the DMs Guild agreement has the same sort of "self destruct" logic that the d20STL had. (You are only allowed to sell your DMs Guild content via DMs Guild, so if they ever shut that down, they shut down all the DMs Guild content too.)

Probably also true, which is why you would publish via the 5e SRD/OGL on your own. But this was about your setting and selling it to WotC for them to put the full glitz and glitter of REAL D&D on it, much like they did for Kieth Baker.

I brought the Guild up as a "middle of the road" option: boiling off a bit of the "world-specifics" to make it vanilla D&D would allow full use of the ruleset, digital distribution and a 50 percent share of the sales which -- to me, anyway -- seems mostly-fair for the individual being able to use the current ruleset and/or the option of writing all-in with those settings WotC has opened up to IP sharing (alas, still no Mystara.....). You wouldn't necessarily need to worry about the corporate suits meddling with your material unless they bought it outright from you. And then you'd be in that boat the OP mentioned in the OP, waiving any further rights to said work.

But yeah, it'd be hard to pass up handing the material over to WotC's stable of artists. Matter of fact, I have a whole series of rough sketches and art briefs they could work from, for some of the scenes from the Chronicle......

I honestly don't think that DMs Guild is an option, because of the fact that you would need to remove the campaign setting from any content you put up.

WotC would buy your rules and then apply them to another world, if you went down that route.

Rogukan (the Legend of the Five Rings campaign setting) is another example of a world that WotC bought. And they sold it back later.

I've definitely thought about the possibility of selling one of my campaign settings to be published commercially. It's one of the reasons that I made radical changes to my college D&D world when I converted it to GURPS--I wanted to strip out the most blatant "D&D-isms" and build my own races and pantheons.

I also co-wrote a submission for WOTC's 3E setting contest. (None of the three of us has ever tried using that world, and I don't think any us still have the text of that entry, or the map I drew while we were working it out.)

Much more recently, one of my current players asked me if I was planning to publish my "Time of the Tarrasque" Pathfinder setting. My answer was basically: I'd love to, but I'm still working on it, and we've barely even started playtesting it.

timemrick wrote:I've definitely thought about the possibility of selling one of my campaign settings to be published commercially. It's one of the reasons that I made radical changes to my college D&D world when I converted it to GURPS--I wanted to strip out the most blatant "D&D-isms" and build my own races and pantheons.

timemrick wrote:I also co-wrote a submission for WOTC's 3E setting contest. (None of the three of us has ever tried using that world, and I don't think any us still have the text of that entry, or the map I drew while we were working it out.)

Great! I wonder how many other Piazza members entered the WotC setting search.

timemrick wrote:Much more recently, one of my current players asked me if I was planning to publish my "Time of the Tarrasque" Pathfinder setting. My answer was basically: I'd love to, but I'm still working on it, and we've barely even started playtesting it.

You know, if you made a Player's Guide to Time of the Tarrasque for your players in instalments, you could make that public, to see if you could build up an audience for it. And if you can, that could turn into the core group that supports a Kickstarter campaign. (Alternatively, you could go down the Patreon route and use the money to fun artwork and maps - if you don't make that sort of stuff yourself. And eventually have enough stuff to throw together a commercial product.)

Well, since my AD&D world is STRONGLY based on Andre Norton's Witch World, and has WW-unique elements deeply interwoven throughout, there is virtually no chance that WotC would risk a fight with Steve Jackson Games (who hold the WW RPG license, which they used for the GURPS WW game rules published in 1989).

Big Mac wrote:Great! I wonder how many other Piazza members entered the WotC setting search.

I sent a submission for the 3E setting contest.

...and...

Angel Tarragon wrote:I co-wrote an entry for the contest as well.

That's great! I wonder if it would be worth compiling a list of campaign settings that failed to beat Eberron. I know that at least a couple of them got published as 3rd Party Publisher campaign settings. I wonder if anyone turned their rejected campaign setting into a homebrew world.

BlackBat242 wrote:Well, since my AD&D world is STRONGLY based on Andre Norton's Witch World, and has WW-unique elements deeply interwoven throughout, there is virtually no chance that WotC would risk a fight with Steve Jackson Games (who hold the WW RPG license, which they used for the GURPS WW game rules published in 1989).

...and...

Ashtagon wrote:My understanding is that SJG held the Witchworld licence, but no longer does (which is why they can't sell it any ore). The WW licence is currently unheld.

There is the risk of derivative fan-material. You don't totally own what you have.

Having said that, you can clean out the borrowed IP, add in replacement material you created yourself and then sell the results.

Richard Green did that with Parsantium (which was originally designed as a homebrew Al-Qadim city) and it seems to stand on it's own feet pretty well.

Zeromaru X wrote:Like RobJN's, my personal world is so troperific and dependent in stuff borrowed from D&D and other settings, I don't think WotC would want to buy it, even if I wanted to sell it.

Not everyone needs to sell their stuff. (I don't really want to sell my stuff.) But you could probably sell a few things on DMs Guild, after they open it up to the campaign settings you like to write for.

Zeromaru X wrote:Like RobJN's, my personal world is so troperific and dependent in stuff borrowed from D&D and other settings, I don't think WotC would want to buy it, even if I wanted to sell it.

Same here. I like my world, and it is only just less than 2 years old, but I am excited to have it around - to explore and to share with my table-top group. It is a pipe-dream to share it as a professional & quality product, but until that time, I can just share it via Homebrew Worlds here at the Piazza.

That's great! I wonder if it would be worth compiling a list of campaign settings that failed to beat Eberron. I know that at least a couple of them got published as 3rd Party Publisher campaign settings. I wonder if anyone turned their rejected campaign setting into a homebrew world.